Melanie Stidolph

Delivered lecture for BA Photography students in Bournemouth on The Dark Room this week – looking at contemporary practitioners who focus on the spaces and equipment of photography – Christopher Williams and Alexander Nicolas Gehring for instance.  Back in studio experimenting with dogs, triggers and safety lights on new moving image work.

Album², Five Years

Jo Addison, Anna Lucas, Louisa Martin, Melanie Stidolph, Alice Walton and Maria Zahle
Curated by Leanne Turvey, catalogue text by Curator Amy McKelvie

Album took place at Five Years in 2010, the original invitation was for artists to consider extending the parameters of what might usually be exhibited and shed light on the more intimate, uncertain space of their studios. Album² returns to the premise three years on to consider the processes and decisions used to determine when something made or done becomes an artwork. Showing new moving image piece Estate.

Preview – Friday 11th October, 6-9pm

Launch – Friday 20th September, 6-9pm, Banner Repeater, Hackney Downs Station – new artist’s publication by Sarah Carne with contributions from; Sovay Berriman, Sam Curtis, Antoinette Hachler, John O’Hare, Henrietta Hine, Kevin Logan, Fiona Lumbers and Melanie Stidolph, including artists in conversation, Ruth Claxton and Becky Shaw.  Sarah has invited these artists to reflect on their roles as artists within their workplace, artists who work in schools, prisons and galleries have been making new work which will be revealed in the new publication, designed by Shining Studio.

Thank you to João and Catarina of the wonderful Fauna and Flora website – www.faunaandflora.org.  They are featuring some works from my exhibition The Fall on their blog.  Their website is a growing map of evocative works by international photographers, and they bring a great sensibility to the discussion and presentation of the works.  They are developing the project all the time – exhibitions, book works and online interviews. Thanks too to Andrew Bruce www.brucebruce.co.uk for mentioning my work to Fauna and Flora, enjoying his work, particularly the ‘flying’ animals in the Vanitas series.

Online now, interview with Christiane Monarchi, Editor of Photomonitor for its November issue.  Discussion around the new work for exhibition The Fall centering on the possibility of shifts in tone in the work from ‘playful ephemeral whimsy….(to) possible darker meanings – the possibility of mishap, accident, or even violence’. The full interview can be found at www.photomonitor.co.uk.

A new publication to coincide with the solo exhibition The Fall, which is at Campbell Works gallery until 4th November. Features new essay by Daniel C Blight which engages with the nature and role of the ‘punctum’ in images that are not directly triggered by the photographer’s hand. Full colour 40 page publication designed by Cameron Leadbetter of Shining Studio includes works from the current exhibition and the wider body of work. ‘Photographs taken with the mechanical motion detector are photographs emancipated from their dependence on human ritual. The punctum emerges from the photograph, denies its crime, announces itself as something that it is not and disappears.’Daniel C Blight 

Is That It is a group exhibition by the Tri-pod group of photographers.  Tri-pod was established by Miranda Gavin and Wendy Pye as a platform for encouraging and demystifying the creative process.  This group exhibition was conceived as a stopping point for work in progress; each of the 9 participating photographers are showing work that in some way is not yet fixed in its presentation method, image selection, or ongoing development of ideas.  The exhibition is part of the Brighton Photo Fringe and is on until Sunday 4th November showing work by: Natasha Caruana, Zoe Childerley, Miranda Gavin, Karen Grainger, Dean Hollowood, Sacha Lehrfreund, Judith Lyons, Wendy Pye and Melanie Stidolph.  A big thank you to everyone for all their work in putting it together.

Thanks very much to Daniel C Blight who chose my work Windfall as the starting point for his intriguing piece of writing for the site Various Small Fires.  Daniel was invited by Thierry Bal to contribute to the One Photograph series. Daniel’s writing will also appear in a new publication as part of my upcoming solo show The Fall at Campbell Works (October 11th – November 4th) where Daniel will be talking about his writing at the gallery on Saturday November 3rd at 3pm.